Product Description

Why should a routine security check drive Fennan to suicide? Why should a suicide arrange for a GPO alarm call? Le Carre's debut novel blends murder investigation with a spy story.

Review

''A subtle and acute story of counter-espionage marked by restraint, indirection, and intelligence.'' --
New York Times Book Review

''The premier spy novelist of his time and perhaps of all time. . . . '' --
Time magazine

''Le Carre' is a brilliant linguistic artist with a keen eye for the exotic and not-so-exotic locale, a crafty moralizer with an occasional bent for sentiment.'' --
Wall Street Journal

''He is one of the half-dozen best novelists now working in English.'' --
Chicago Sun-Times

''Le Carre' is one of the best novelists -- of any kind -- we have.'' --
Vanity Fair

''Le Carre' is more than just a great storyteller -- he captures the Zeitgeist itself.'' --Tom Wolfe

''No other contemporary novelist has more durably enjoyed the twin badges of being both well-read and well-regarded.'' -- Scott Turow

''A finely wrought and compelling admixture of three types of crime writing: the novel of action and excitement that we commonly call a thriller, the spy story, and the detective story.'' -- P. D. James

''Intelligent, thrilling, surprising. . . makes most cloak-and-dagger stuff taste of cardboard.'' --
Sunday Telegraph (London)

''Brilliant. Realistic. Constant suspense. . . excellent writing.'' --
Observer (London)

From the Inside Flap

"Intelligent, thrilling, surprising ... makes most cloak-and-dagger stuff taste of cardboard."-- Sunday Telegraph (London)
With the incomparable opening chapter of Call for the Dead, titled "A Brief History of George Smiley," John Le Carré introduces his legendary spy and immediately ensnares you in the shadowy world Smiley inhabits.
Pulled back from overseas duty during World War II, Smiley was redirected to face the threats of the Cold War. He had been asked to interview Samuel Fennan of the Foreign Office after an anonymous letter accused Fennan of Communist Party membership. Smiley's report cleared him of the allegations, so he was stunned to learn that Fennan had died the day after the interview, leaving a suicide note that claimed his career had been ruined. Investigating circumstances that make no sense to him, Smiley gradually uncovers a spy ring and in so doing is led into a lethal duel of wits with the best of his war-time pupils.
Call for the Dead marks the beginning of John Le Carré's brilliant literary career, just as it launches the life of one of the most memorable fictional characters of the twentieth century.
John Le Carré is the author of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Smiley's People; The Tailor of Panama; The Constant Gardener; and many other best-selling titles, including this most recent novel, Absolute Friends. He lives in Cornwall, England.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Brief History of George Smiley
When Lady Ann Sercomb married George Smiley towards the end of the war she described him to her astonished Mayfair friends as breathtakingly ordinary. When she left him two years later in favour of a Cuban motor racing driver, she announced enigmatically that if she hadn't left him then, she never could have done; and Viscount Sawley made a special journey to his club to observe that the cat was out of the bag.
This remark, which enjoyed a brief season as a mot, can only be understood by those who knew Smiley. Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad. Sawley, in fact, declared at the wedding that "Sercomb was mated to a bullfrog in a sou'wester." And Smiley, unaware of this description, had waddled down the aisle in search of the kiss that would turn him into a Prince.
Was he rich or poor, peasant or priest? Where had she got him from? The incongruity of